


for all the days of my life

by HereComeDatBoi



Series: you're the one that's making me strong [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5+1 Things, Domestic Fluff, Earth Dad Adam (Voltron), First Love, Getting Together, How is that not a tag, M/M, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Marriage Proposal Take Two, Matt probably needs a raise, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), Well it is now, actually he just loves cryptids in general, adashi baby, farmer husbands, keith loves mothman, parenthood round two, teenage boys tackle parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-10-18 17:15:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17584982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereComeDatBoi/pseuds/HereComeDatBoi
Summary: “Are we dating?” Shiro asked, determinedly not looking at the bench where Matt and Rizavi were cackling by the window. “I—I really want us to be, Adam. I think I’ve liked you since the day you first beat me in the simulators.”“I never really thought I’d date anyone, especially not here,” confessed Adam. “But I like you too, Takashi. Of course I’ll go out with you.”Five times Adam says yes, and one time Shiro does.





	1. Ice Cream, Dating, and Keith

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaffeinatedFlumadiddle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffeinatedFlumadiddle/gifts).



> catch me procrastinating on heaven on his shoulders because the plot's about to start and my brain isn't ready
> 
> *leaves this on the ground, walks away*
> 
> Also, brief note: the Rizavi mentioned here is an OC, Nadia's older sister!

“Do you want to go to the novelty ice-cream place that just opened downtown?” asked Shiro. “They’re giving out their featured flavor for free today.”

His friend only blinked at him from behind a pair of Matt’s round glasses, which didn’t do much for his eyes except make him look like a solemn long-legged owl. Adam had forgotten his glasses in the barracks that morning, and was therefore stuck with the indignity of wearing Matt’s old-fashioned spares until lectures were over.

“Are we allowed to leave campus?” he wondered, cramming an armful of papers into his bag. “Matt said that Rizavi got herself two months’ worth of detention for sneaking out last year.”

“We are if we have faculty clearance,” Shiro pointed out. He flushed slightly when Adam lifted his chin to look at him—the younger boy was squinting so much that it was a miracle he could see at all, but the light in his honey-colored eyes was still just as bewitching as usual. “Professor Holt’s going to the city to pick up some parts, and he said that we could go with him.”

“Well, I didn’t really have anything much to do tonight, so I guess I’ll come,” said Adam, squinting even harder as Shiro took a step backwards. “Where are you going, Takashi? I need your arm if I’m going to make it back to my room without hitting every wall I meet.”

“Oh, right.” Shiro took a deep breath and held out his hand to Adam, who took it and slung his backpack over his shoulder before prodding Shiro in the side.

“ _Today,_ if you wouldn’t mind,” he teased. “The ice cream’s a-waiting, ‘Kashi.”

Shiro blushed again, swallowing the confession that had been teetering on his lips for the past two months; he was pretty sure their friendship wouldn’t suffer if Adam turned him down, but he wanted to ask him out the right way all the same. After all, if—

“Ow!” Adam complained. “You had _one_ job, Takashi.” He had run nose-first into the door, trusting from Shiro’s infatuated silence that nothing was in his way. Shiro watched him poke at the borrowed glasses and bit his tongue to keep from laughing—Adam was so _ridiculously_ cute, and sometimes it felt like a crime not to smile while looking at him.

“Don’t laugh, you—oh my God, I’m _injured_ , do you have _no_ pity—”

But they were both giggling like idiots when they stumbled back to the dorms, and later in the back of the Holts’ old sedan they whispered back and forth until Matt’s baby sister (all of six years old at the time) yelled at them to stop keeping secrets. The coffee-bean ice cream he got in the city was perfect, Shiro remembers—cold and sweet, with just enough caffeine to keep him alert as they walked by the shops.

The weight of Adam’s arm round his waist had been a hundred times sweeter.

*    *    *

Among the three-person disaster that was the Garrison’s Salad Squad, conversations usually started out of nowhere and kept going until they wandered down at least eight different tangents. Nobody really knew how Shiro, Matt, and Adam ever kept up with each other (or, more specifically, how Shiro and Adam kept up with Matt), but Matt very much doubted that the randomness was _his_ fault. After all, he and Shiro had just been talking about starting an anime club, and now Shiro was facedown on his bed and wailing distractedly about _kissing_ , of all things _._

“I kissed Adam outside the ballroom last night. And now we both have detention.”

“You don’t look very upset,” Matt observed. The three of them lived in a triple, now; both Adam and Shiro had been suspiciously pink-cheeked and quiet when he finally got back from the cotillion, and now he supposed he knew why. “Did he kiss you back?”

“Why do you think we got detention? He was, um, a lot less shy than I thought he would be, and then Iverson was walking by.”

“He must have let you off easy then,” mused Matt. “What did he say?”

“That we were getting cleaning duty for inappropriate displays of affection, and that if either of us got our hearts broken he’d demote us both down to cargo.”

“I bet my next week’s allowance that he’ll give you a less horrible job instead. But what happened after that?”

“We came back and went to sleep,” said Shiro, blushing like an early sunset. “I think I was too nervous to say anything. I—I really want to ask him out, Matt, but I can’t get the words out even for practice!”

“You already know he likes you!” Matt threw up his hands. “How hard can it be? Stop being a baby and go get your man, or I’ll tell him what you did at breakfast.”

“You promised you wouldn’t, so no take-backs. And it’s _so_ hard,” groaned the other boy. “What if I trip on my shoelaces and knock him out? What if I start crying? Oh my God, I’m already crying—”

“That’s it. I’m going to class, and you’re going to detention, and if the two of you aren’t together by dinner I’ll never hack you into the senior sims again.”

But later that day Matt ended up witnessing Shiro’s awkward proposal for himself (in the _lunch line,_ of all places) so he never got to make good on his threat. To his credit Shiro neither tripped nor started crying, though this was probably because Matt had forced him to wear boots instead of sneakers.

“Are we dating?” Shiro asked, determinedly not looking at the bench where Matt and Rizavi were cackling by the window. “I—I really want us to be, Adam. I think I’ve liked you since the day you first beat me in the simulators.”

“I never really thought I’d date anyone, especially not here,” confessed Adam. “But I like you too, Takashi. Of course I’ll go out with you.”

Matt fist-pumped. It was true that his friends were both idiots, but sometimes even they managed to get there in the end somehow.

With his help, of course. They were still useless without him, and he knew it.

*    *    *

Shiro liked to think that he and Adam had an exemplary relationship. They lived together in harmony without arguing over much more than where to keep the laundry detergent, and went to bed in each other’s arms every night without fail. If either one of them had an issue, they just said it straight-out: like when Adam wanted Shiro to clean the drain right after showering (his hair always shed like a cat’s, for some reason) or when Shiro thought Adam was working himself too hard and needed more sleep on weeknights. Shiro had never dreamed there might be a question his boyfriend _wouldn’t_ want to hear from him, but here he was—standing alone in the doorway to their bedroom, dressed in nothing but a bathrobe and about sixty-five percent sure that what he was about to say would send Adam running for the hills.

“Adam, honey?”

“Hm?” said Adam, poking his head out of the kitchen. “Do you need help with something, love? You’d better come in here and tell me. I can’t leave the fish for long.”

“Not exactly,” Shiro mumbled, following the heavenly scent of fried salmon until he was close enough to kiss his boyfriend’s cheek. “You know how we’ve been having Keith over for dinner lately?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I was thinking—it’s just a thought, mind you, but since he’s going to be enrolled this fall Garrison student services is going to get custody of him. And they don’t really know him, sunshine—but I’ve been partnered with him through the mentor program for a while now, and I thought—”

“Why don’t you just apply for custody instead?” wondered Adam, sprinkling chilies into his frying pan. “I could do it with you, if they’re okay with unmarried teenage couples applying—he was from a Baptist children’s home, right? But we’re not really doing anything with the spare bedroom, and I cook way too much food for just us anyway. I mean, it’s just an option, but if he’s okay with it I think living here might be good for him.”

Shiro goggled at him. _“What?”_

“Well, you don’t have to if you don’t think Keith’s ready,” Adam backtracked. “Or if you’re not, which is fine! But we _are_ of age, and I’ve got a flexible schedule, so if he ever gets sick or something I can take time off to take care of him. And I think living with you would do wonders for him, Takashi—he really looks up to you, and you know how kids can be at his age. Half of them see the scholarship class and call them charity cases because they’re insecure about themselves. We can rely on the faculty to keep it from getting out of hand for the most part, but in the dorms—”

“I hadn’t even thought that far,” Shiro admitted. “I just, you know. Wanted him. He deserves to be wanted, and looked after until he can take care of himself, and I want to be able to do that. Together, with you, if you’ll have us.”

“If you’ll have us, he says,” muttered Adam, grabbing a pair of chopsticks and filling Shiro’s place. “There’s rice in that pot over there, and I’ve already poured out the miso. Now go eat before you keel over, you haven’t even had breakfast.”

“Wait, where are you going?”

Adam had torn off his apron, and was stomping towards their bedroom like a man on a mission. To be fair he usually was on a mission of some kind, but he never looked quite this determined when Matt roped him into plotting evil with Katie.

“To my laptop so I can look up the home’s adoption policy, and set up an appointment with a social worker. Finish your soup, Takashi! How are you going to raise a twelve-year-old if you can’t teach him healthy eating habits?”

“But—”

“Lunch first, love. Protests later.”

“...You’re enjoying this, aren’t you.”

“We’re getting a kid brother who loves chaos as much as I do, moonlight. What else did you expect?”

“At least a few months before you two teamed up on me, maybe,” Shiro laughed. “What do you say?”

“No deal,” sang Adam. “I’ll be back in a bit, darling. Eat your rice.”

“I love you so much, sunshine.”

His boyfriend stopped in his tracks.

“I know, _janu_ ,” he murmured, coming back to kiss the top of Shiro’s head. “I love you too. I’ll get this done, just you wait and see. I promise.”

*    *    *

Scarcely three weeks later, Shiro found himself buying three rolls of tape for Keith’s new mothman posters.

“Keith, don’t you think some variety might be better for your room? That’s...a lot of cryptids, you know?”

“Hush, Takashi. You’ll ruin his aesthetic.”

“Oh my god, Adam. What does that even _mean?_ ”

“Beats me. Oh look, there’s a Loch Ness Monster.”

“I can’t believe you sometimes, love.”

 


	2. Proposal, Round One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Adam's engagement ring!!](https://houseofwaris.com/collections/fine-jewelry/products/copy-of-light-emanating-from-the-heart)

Shiro hadn’t really anticipated visiting a jewelry store on his grocery run that day. But it was raining, and he had to drive a little further than usual in order to get to the Asian market on the opposite side of the city, which meant he ended up passing the shopping mall and the Tiffany billboard above it. As he left the advertisement behind and continued on toward the supermarket he thought (as he did so, so often) of himself on some kind of mission, and Adam right there beside him. Of course Adam hadn’t been on a mission since their last supply run three years ago, but Shiro never stopped hoping that might change someday. 

It wasn’t like they  _ hadn’t  _ talked about marriage, he thought. Just that morning when they got out of bed he’d laughed himself hoarse while digging through the blankets for Adam’s glasses—his boyfriend ended up losing them about every other day, without fail—and realized anew that he didn’t want to spend his mornings anywhere else. He’d said so over breakfast, as he often did, and in return he received a plate of rolled omelets and a kiss so sweetly disarming that he couldn’t stop playing it back in his head all the way to work. But then they also had conversations like these, which were a lot more telling:

Shiro: “Do you think we should stick with a court wedding and just have a party after?”

Adam: “I think everybody at the Garrison is way too invested in our relationship, love. If they didn’t get to see us married no one would let us hear the end of it.”

Keith: “Are you guys going to invite Iverson?”

Shiro: “He’s not so bad, Keith—”

This always prompted an hour-long rant from their foster brother about how Iverson  _ was  _ “just that bad” and so the topic of marriage and wedding ceremonies was usually kept aside for when Keith was out of earshot. But one of them was going to propose  _ eventually,  _ so—

Shiro turned the car around. After all, it was almost Christmas, and if he missed his chance Adam would probably make him wait until Valentine’s day before saying yes. He stuffed the grocery list into his pocket and parked in the lot next to the mall, muttering about the prices at Tiffany’s before pulling out his umbrella and running through the doors. According to the directory painted on the nearest wall, there were several jewelry stores in the complex: a Cartier shop, a Bijoux Terner—Tiffany, of course, and...

He blinked, certain he had read the name incorrectly—but the neat cursive script was as clear as day, and Shiro found himself trembling with excitement as he took an elevator up to the third floor. It was quieter than the first, and Shiro passed no more than ten or eleven people on his way to the shop of his choice: a novelty jewelry outlet emblazoned with the name  _ W. Ahluwalia.  _

Though the Ahluwalia chain didn’t seem to do wedding and engagement jewelry at all it did have a selection of rings, and Shiro browsed the display cases with a growing sense of good fortune. Silver looked terrible with Adam’s dark skin, anyway, and a run-of-the-mill diamond solitaire felt far too cheap somehow, even if it might cost him three or four thousand to buy one—

And then he saw it, nestled between a pair of pearl earrings and a star-shaped sapphire pendant.

“Um, ma’am?” he called, staring wide-eyed at the broad gold ring behind the illuminated glass. “Could I have a look at that one, please?”

The sales attendant laughed and unlocked the case, lifting out the box and setting it on the counter for Shiro to see. “Someone’s a very lucky girl, isn’t she? It’s a bit broad for a woman’s hand, but if you like it we can have it resized by next—”

“It’s for my boyfriend,” said Shiro shyly. “He wears one of his dad’s old rings sometimes, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same size as this one.”

_ This is the one,  _ he thought, as the woman made an approving sort of sound.  _ It’s perfect.  _

“Do you want an inscription?” 

“I don’t think I can afford it,” he sighed. “I’m stretching our budget enough as it is. Hopefully he doesn’t kill me when he finds out.”

“I understand, honey. Gift-wrapping, then? Christmas is just next week.”

“Yes, please,” replied Shiro, getting out his credit card. “Also, I know you don’t do wedding bands, but do you have anything he might be able to match with this?”

“Not in stock at the moment,” said the clerk regretfully. “And not in gold, definitely. But we can get a wedding band custom-made to fit this one by mid-January, since it’ll be based on a specific piece. Is that all right?”

Shiro eagerly acquiesced, and left his contact information behind before marching out of the store with a heart as light as air and about a thousand dollars depleted from his bank account. Adam was  _ definitely  _ going to kill him when he found out how much the ring had cost—maybe he would notice even earlier, while going over their bills, but somehow Shiro didn’t care. He was going to be officially engaged by the end of the year, and it felt like walking on sunshine. 

* * *

Like most things in life, the actual proposal didn’t go to plan. Shiro had intended to ask after Adam’s experimental Christmas dinner (and, more importantly, after Keith went to bed) but in the end it was Keith who actually made him do it.

Shiro was sitting cross-legged by the tree, fiddling with the red velvet box in the pocket of his bathrobe while Adam finished cooking a sauce in the kitchen. Keith was perched on the counter over the dishwasher, complaining about whatever Adam had decided to cook and asking for sweets like the diet-happy teenager he was. Adam only brushed him off and pointed him to the container of rasgullas in the fridge, which he had apparently been saving for New Year’s eve. 

This was where he made his fatal mistake. 

Because Keith, being Keith, ate all the rasgullas. 

_ “Keith! You tiny fiend—!”  _

“Oh no,” mumbled Keith, shoving the last one into his mouth. He leapt out of his chair and flew out of the kitchen, beating Adam into the living room by only three or four feet. They circled back around the kitchen wall and passed Shiro twice before he realized what was happening: namely, that Adam was chasing Keith with the sauce ladle while Keith screamed for mercy. When Keith came around the third time Shiro got up and fell onto one knee, knocking his brother headlong into the Christmas tree and stopping Adam in his tracks. 

“Takashi?” whispered Adam, staring at the box on Shiro’s upturned palm. “What—”

“Marry me, sunshine,” murmured Shiro devotedly, throwing the speech he had planned with Matt right out the snow-covered window. “I—I’ll never want anything more than this, never. I love you so much, darling—”

Adam burst into tears and knelt down on the carpet beside him. “Yes, of course I’ll marry you, of  _ course— _ ”

“You haven’t even seen the ring, love,” said Shiro, swallowing the lump in his own throat as he opened the lid of the case. “I kind of forgot it had to be open when I asked.”

His boyfriend— _ fiance,  _ Shiro realized giddily—took in a breath. 

“Oh, Kashi. It’s  _ beautiful. _ ”

He stared in awe at the ring as Shiro took it out of its box, dabbing at the corners of his eyes while Keith flailed about under a heap of wrapped gifts in the background. The band was a plain strip of twenty-two karat gold, splitting in half at the top of the setting before wrapping around a tiny gold compass set with minute diamonds at the rim and pointers. Adam realized the meaning behind it at once, and sobbed into his jacket sleeve as Shiro slipped it onto his finger

“I know it’s not a working one,” he said, brushing a lock of hair away from Adam’s forehead. “But since we’re apart more often than we should be, I got a compass as a promise to always come back to you.”

Adam leaned in and kissed him. 

“Does this mean I have to wait until Valentine’s to give you my ring?”

_ “What?” _

“I bought it back in November, love. Matt helped me choose it.”

“...Of course he did.”

“Are you guys going to help me out or just stare at each other all night?” grumbled Keith, kicking a box of peppermints clear across the room. “I’m stuck.”

They laughed and fished Keith out of the pile of Christmas presents before going into the kitchen hand-in-hand for dinner, where there were many more kisses and cries of disgust from Keith over the roast and gravy. When Adam and Shiro went to bed that night the ring did not leave Adam’s finger, and in the morning Shiro woke to a ray of white sunlight setting the gems on his fiance’s hand ablaze like water under the stars.  

“Good morning, sunshine,” he whispered, brushing Adam’s cheek with his palm. “Are you ready to get up, love?”

“Just a little longer,” Adam sighed. “Go back to sleep, moonlight.”

So they did, sinking down under the covers and into each other’s arms as their eyes fluttered shut against the light from the window—

“I’m going to open the presents without you guys if you don’t get up in the next  _ five minutes. _ ”

—Or not. 


	3. Proposal, Round Two

It was over, Shiro thought numbly.

He’d never really expected to see the end of the war, not with his luck. When he and the others first returned to Earth they found it miraculously whole; nobody save for a few higher-ups in the military even knew that the war had _happened_ , though that was all thanks to Adam. To everyone else at the Garrison too, of course, namely Sam and Colleen, but it had mostly been Adam.

Shiro hadn’t gone to visit the Atlas since the day he carried Adam out of the ruined vault in the hold, but with everything that followed there hadn’t been time. The recovery ward in the hospital was full now, with a white curtain cordoning off the cubicles past Adam’s bed by the door, and all their friends and colleagues had come around to visit even before Adam was awake to greet them.

But he was awake now, blinking sleepily in Shiro’s arms and nuzzling into his shoulder in a silent attempt to convey that he was too tired to talk. Shiro bit his lip and kissed the top of Adam’s head, thanking every deity he knew that his darling’s life had been spared—the hours that passed between Adam’s death and revival had been torture worse than the gladiator ring, and now that he was back again—

“I’m the only one of us who’s allowed to die, love,” he whispered, pulling Adam closer. “You’re staying with me till the end, you hear? I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”

“Ngghh,” Adam groaned. “Y’died _twice,_ ‘Kashi. I died for a _good_ cause, ‘n I’m never gonna let you forget it.”

“Please don’t,” croaked Shiro, holding back a cry. “I’d love to be yelled at for Kerberos right now, believe me. Bring it up every day if you have to, sunshine.”

“Mm. You bet I will.” Adam turned his gaze to the curtain fencing off the south half of the room. “Are they—”

“They’re just fine, love,” Shiro soothed. “They ought to be up and about by tomorrow, or the day after. Castile just came by about half an hour ago and told me they’ll be off the IV lines tonight.”

“Feels like a dream. That I get to have this—and Keith, and you—”

“That’s my line, sunshine,” he whispered. “There’s never been anyone happier than I am right now.”

Adam didn’t answer. He had fallen asleep again, with his soft breath coming and going against the neck of Shiro’s t-shirt as he sank back into a (hopefully peaceful) slumber.

_You’re so strong, darling,_ thought Shiro, smoothing back a lock of hair from Adam’s forehead. _There’s never been anything that could shake you. I’ve been drawing on your memory these past three years, sweetheart. It’s the only reason I’m still alive._ The image of his fiance stumbling out of a hospital bed and straight into the cockpit of a first-generation MFE fighter glowed like fire on the insides of his eyelids, and not for the first time he realized that Adam had given his life for more than the ones he loved—his heart had broken for the universe, and the universe itself had repaid him.

“I’m going to give you the world, _soniye_ ,” he sobbed, putting a hand to his eyes to keep his tears off the blankets. “I will, if it’s the last thing I do.”

*    *    *

About an hour later he found himself back in the Garrison canteen, eating rice and _korokke_ with miso soup—nowhere near as flavorful as Adam used to make, but still it was better than nothing—in a hidden corner near the side-door to the kitchen. He and Matt and Adam used to sit at the same table when they were cadets, because it was the only one anchored far enough from the security cameras. It made sense, Shiro thought; Adam and Matt always ran headlong into trouble purely for the fun of it, and the secret cafeteria nook had been their favorite place to plot. It was there that Matt sketched out his master plan to help Mishaal Rizavi run for student council, which seemed harmless enough at first—but then the whole thing had ended with a campus lockdown and an EW fighter gone rogue, and a whole semester’s worth of kitchen duty for all three members of the Salad Squad.

“Mind if I join you?” came a voice from behind him.

“Colleen! Of course, you don’t need to ask.” He moved over to make room for her on the bench, switching his chopsticks to his left hand so she could take the side further from the vent. “Is everything okay?”

“You’re still asking everyone that, after all you saw out there,” she said, sitting down at his right. “You should think about yourself a little more, Shiro.”

“I don’t really like to,” Shiro confessed. “With everything that’s happened, and Adam—I just want to forget, if that makes sense. We didn’t lose anyone during the war, so I’m going to take that for the blessing it is and move on.”

He paused.

“I really do want to know if you’re doing all right, though.”

“I know,” smiled Colleen. “And I am. I’ve got my feet back on the ground and Katie wreaking havoc at home, so I’m as happy as can be.”

“You haven’t only got Pidge, though.” Shiro fought back a grin. “This morning, Hunk and Lance were going around boasting that they were allowed to call you Mom.”

“Well, they adopted Katie,” she laughed. “It only made sense for me to adopt them back.”

The conversation drifted to at least twenty more subjects, after that—Shiro told her about Allura’s plans to settle on New Altea, and Colleen rejoined with a brief outline of the new culturing project she was starting with Rizavi’s elder sister. They talked themselves almost hoarse while they ate, and just before Colleen got up to leave she took a small red box from her satchel and set it down in front of him.

“Adam came to see me the night before he went into surgery,” she said quietly. “He didn’t think he would make it out, back then. None of us did. But he gave me the ring for safekeeping, and told me to give it back to you when you came home.”

“Colleen, I—”

“He never stopped wearing it, you know. Not when the _Theia-Selene_ went missing, or even after Dos Santos had you declared dead. He went to what he thought would be his grave still loving you, and the first thing he did after waking up in the Atlas two years later was ask if you’d come home.”

She put her bag over her shoulder and laid a hand on his arm.

“Don’t break his heart again, okay? I know it wasn’t your fault before, with Kerberos and the dystrophy—but I was there for the worst of it after Keith and Katie disappeared, and I’m telling you here and now that he’s not going to survive losing you a third time.”

It was clear that she didn’t expect an answer, Shiro realized. She was gone as soon as the words were out of her mouth, leaving him alone on the plastic bench as he reached out to open the box.

The ring didn’t look quite the same as it did when he saw it last, he thought. The diamonds still glittered just as brilliantly as they had on the day he proposed, but the gold was definitely worn—there were scratches here and there along the band, and the maker’s signature on the inside was noticeably flattened, as if Adam had often rotated the ring around his finger to calm himself. He used to do the same to his father’s old ring, Shiro recalled, until he decided to take it off and wear it on a chain around his neck.

_“He never stopped wearing it.”_

Shiro never gave back his own ring, either. A pair of Galra prison guards had taken it after he was captured, and not for the first time he wished he remembered their names so that he could go back to reclaim it. Adam had designed that ring himself, and Shiro remembered wishing he still had it even during the torment of Haggar’s experiments on his arm.

But then he thought of the tan line still clear on Adam’s fourth finger, and threw his tray into the cleaning station before pelting out the door.

*    *    *

Adam’s eyes went to the bulge in his pocket about three seconds after Shiro walked back into the medical wing.

“That’s...a jewelry box, definitely,” he observed, shifting closer to his IV stand so that Shiro could sit beside him. “Why’ve you got it, love?”

“Colleen gave it back to me,” Shiro admitted. “She said you never took it off until the Atlas.”

“Not even to bathe. Keith was always afraid I’d drop it down the drain, or—”

Adam went still.

“Takashi?”

“Adam, _janu_ ,” he croaked, getting down on one knee. “Sweetheart _,_ I—I’ll go _mad_ if I have to live another day without you, I swear it—”

“What kind of idiot proposes twice?” Adam wept, pulling him down for a kiss. “Of course I’ll marry you, moonlight, of _course—._ ”

“Let’s get married today,” gasped Shiro, swaying on the spot as he slipped the ring back onto Adam’s finger. “I’m pretty sure Iverson’s ordained, and we can get Lance and Keith to witness. We’ll tell the others later, or right away if you like, and get Matt to book us plane tickets to Shindola so we can leave as soon as you’re better.”

“But first we’ll go home, and sleep for a month,” said Adam, sobbing and laughing in one. “I know I’ve been stuck in bed for two days, but I want to sleep in the apartment so badly, Takashi.”

“Let’s worry about telling people later, then,” he promised. “They’ll complain, but I honestly couldn’t care less right now.”

“Actually,” mused his fiance, “You know what might be fun? We’ll have Iverson marry us and swear Keith to secrecy, and then the next time someone calls you Shirogane I’ll answer instead.”

“You’re taking my name?” Shiro whispered. “But I thought—”

“It’s like you don’t even _know_ me, love.” Adam kissed his nose. “We work at a military institution, where everyone goes by Private X, or Lieutenant So-and-So—do you honestly think I’d pass this up?”

“Well…”

“Plus, if you took _my_ name, what would everyone call you?”

“That’s...actually a good point.” Shiro took out his phone. “I’m paging the Commander now, sunshine.”

Adam leaned over his shoulder. “What did you write?”

“Adam and I are getting married,” he read off. “Please sign and validate a license before you come round at two. Also, since we can’t get in contact with Keith and Lance, they’re probably in the supply closet next to the third-year sims. Advise covering eyes before going in, from prior experience. Threaten them with cleaning duty on opposite sides of the campus if necessary, and then bring them along for witnesses.”

“We’ve peaked,” giggled Adam. “Remember how much you used to respect him?”

“He put up with us when we were in our teens, honey. If anything, I respect him _more_ for not killing us while he had the chance.”

*    *    *

Iverson did bring a license when he showed up, as well as a pair of witnesses who looked like they’d been eaten by a tornado. Shiro almost laughed at the sight of them, but then he glanced back at Adam’s ring and cried all over his uniform when his new husband first reached up to kiss him.

“You’re stuck with me now, _habibi_ ,” he whispered that evening, kissing Adam’s sleep-heavy eyelids as the night staff ushered him out. “I’m never leaving you again.”

 


	4. Plus One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Birthday Shiro!!!!

Shiro had always pictured himself living out his days as part and parcel of the Garrison, flying missions until his illness forced him to retire and then spending the rest of his functional life teaching, as most of his colleagues planned to do.

And then, of course, there was Adam—throwing wrenches in all his plans from the day they first ran into each other in the E building’s third hallway, when Shiro was fifteen and five foot six and Adam a skinny fourteen-year-old beanpole already pushing five-ten. Nothing went quite as expected, after they met; Shiro never once even imagined that he might find himself lugging a scruffy middle-schooler back to his apartment before he even hit twenty and becoming the aforementioned child’s primary guardian only six months later, but it happened.

As things just tended to do, when Adam was around.

Voltron and the war that followed seem almost like a dream to him now, though Keith and the rest of the paladins remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday. Shiro suspects his hazy memories are the Atlas’s doing; on the last day he spent as its captain it whispered that some things were better left forgotten, and before he disembarked he felt the ache of those two dark years wiped from his mind completely. He’ll never remember his time as Voltron’s black paladin fondly, not when he spent the whole time terrified that something would happen to Keith or Pidge—to say nothing of Lance and Hunk, who were no better prepared to witness war and death than Pidge had been as a three-year-old. But even the war (like all things, as Adam told him once) came to an end in its time, and Shiro was left to breathe freely as if illness and torture and peril had never touched him at all.

He had hoped to go back to his old life, after that...to go back to the little apartment on Klaxon Avenue with his buckwheat pillows and imported rushgrass mats and Adam’s sweet-scented wooden altar in the living room, to the closet where his old clothes still hung between Adam’s long tunics as if neither he nor his husband had ever left the flat in the first place. To Keith’s ridiculous Mothman décor too, though he never told his brother that. To the sweet day-to-day dullness of teaching, which was doubly precious now that his family was whole again. And he did, for a while—but by the first Christmas after the war he found himself yearning again, though he didn’t have even the slightest clue what he was yearning for.

“You’re restless,” Adam observed, clearing away the dishes after Kinkade and Rizavi came over  for dinner one night in early January. Kinkade had proposed to her only a few days earlier, and for some reason Nadia decided their former physics teacher should be the first to hear about it. “What’s the matter, love?”

“I don’t know,” said Shiro, puzzled. “I—I keep feeling that there’s something I _want,_ and I don’t even know what it is.”

“Do you want to go back to space?”

“No! After everything—if Keith or Lance needed me for something then of course I’d go, but otherwise—”

“Then what is it?” Adam kissed his forehead, pulling his chopsticks out of his hands and dropping them into the sink. “Is it everyone getting married?”

Shiro blinked.

“I guess I just feel old,” he muttered, tugging Adam down to sit beside him. “I’m only twenty-seven, and the kids who watched me do demos on how to wear a belt in the flight sims are almost as old as I am.”

“You did go three years without aging, moonlight,” Adam pointed out. “And I went two. Of course they caught up a little in the meanwhile.”

“I _know_ ,” Shiro sighed. “I just...well, I don’t know. I’ll get over it, sunshine, don’t worry.”

But fate (or rather, Allura, Matt, and Pidge) got in the way of his plans to carry on as usual, and a few weeks before his twenty-eighth birthday Pidge and Matt dragged him into their mother’s lab and past the barrier that separated her confidential work from general research. Shiro protested, of course—though he’d spent the last thirteen years hanging around with Matt and Adam most of their conversations about coding and nanotech had gone straight over his head, and now that he thought about it he was possibly the least qualified person available to help with whatever they were doing.

“Let go, Pidge!” he complained, trying to shake her off as she pulled him through yet another set of doors. “Your mother will kill all three of us if I ruin something, and you _know_ how I am in labs.”

“I don’t think you could do anything to this,” sang Matt. “It’s your wedding present.”

“Matt, Adam and I got married over a year ago.” Shiro lifted an eyebrow. “You do remember that, right?”

“And we didn’t give you anything, because we were working on this, and it wasn’t ready.”

“I thought Keith’s gift was supposed to be from everyone?”

“That’s because Lance thought it would be classy to give you a gift with Keith, Hunk’s gift was the wedding cake, and you completely forgot about me and Allura,” shrugged Pidge. “So she and Matt and I just signed our names on Klance’s card at the last minute, since we didn’t want you to find out what we were really making you.”

“Which is…” Shiro trailed off. There seemed to be something small in the corner that looked like a miniature healing pod, glowing a soft blue-white just like the ones at the Castle. “Is that a pod?”

“Technically it’s an incubator.” Matt raised a hand as if to push up his glasses, a habit he never got out of even after getting laser surgery.

“For…what?”

“The quintessence in Adam’s heart isn’t like most people’s,” said Pidge slowly. “You know that.”

A chill ran through Shiro’s bones, and he took two steps back.

“We’re not doing _anything_ with Adam’s quintessence.” A brief flash of blackened limbs and a glass panel glazed over to hide his husband’s still body burned behind his eyelids, and he shook his head at Pidge and Matt like a donkey shaking off flies. “I don’t care what—I won’t let you put him through that again, I won’t—”

“Adam’s heart can create new souls without putting him at risk,” murmured Matt, laying a hand on his arm. “Just like he created the Atlas. Come on, Shiro. You have to understand what we’re getting at here. Souls, but not bodies. He can make a soul, and this can make a body.”

“You mean—”

“You kind of liked being space dad,” said Pidge, nudging his shoulder. “Do you maybe wanna be dad-dad?”

Shiro burst into tears.

*    *    *

The ten months that followed were a mixed bag in every way—full of such heartbreaking joy that Shiro found himself on the verge of crying when he first saw his daughter sucking her thumb on a sonogram, and riddled with fear that had him leaping awake in the middle of the night whenever Adam moved in his sleep, or running to the medbay in a panic when emergency sent a notice to tell him that Adam’s blood pressure had spiked dangerously high. But the year went from winter to autumn without much stress on Adam’s part (except for insatiable cravings and a full nine months of nausea, since their little girl took advantage of the quintessence link to reject every food she disliked) and on the fourteenth of November Sonia Shirogane was born during the wildest thunderstorm Arizona had seen in decades.

He’d lived through almost twenty-nine years and the span of a thousand realities, and the moment he saw her flailing in Dr. Castile’s arms he knew without question that not even the farthest reaches of the universe had ever been half so beautiful. She had his hair exactly, long and black and straight—and when she opened her eyes he saw they were a clear dark grey, shaped like Adam’s and slanted at the corners like his own. He wept when Adam first held her, watching his husband cradle the tiny bundle to the heart that had given her life—watching her forget the confusion of leaving her warm dark home at the sound of Adam’s pulse, which still ran shallow and quick from the shock of regaining the quintessence it had grown used to doing without.

“Hi, moonbeam,” Adam whispered, kissing the tiny forehead before clutching her even tighter. “Happy birthday, _soniye._ ”

And Shiro had taken them both into his arms, crying in earnest into Adam’s limp hair as Sonia’s small fist closed around his finger.

*    *    *

Two years and eight months have gone by since, and now Shiro stands on a weathered grey porch watching the moon glint off the endless expanse of green that makes up the Ahluwalia estate. It rained that afternoon, and the strawberry leaves still sparkle in the dark like diamonds; under the cover of evening the fruits look twice as bewitching as they did during the day, and so when Sonia gets up in the middle of the night and shows no signs of going to sleep again Adam bundles her out of bed and takes her for a walk between the tended runners. He’s careful when he leaves, tucking the blankets close around Shiro so he can sleep in peace, but he feels their absence almost the second Adam shuts the door—and so he follows them, smiling in the shadows of the veranda as Adam points Polaris out to the small bundle of quilts squirming on his shoulder.

“And that one?” chirps Sonia, gesturing somewhere between Hydra and the Big Dipper. “ _Wo kon ho_ , Papa?”

It never fails to amaze Shiro just how smart she is; he doesn’t know much about children besides his own, unless you count his vague memories of a toddler Pidge sticking a plastic fork into a socket and being disappointed that she didn’t get to see sparks. But he’s pretty sure most toddlers of two and a half can’t read particularly fluently, or keep up with conversations without even blinking. Her doctors at the Garrison concluded that her intelligence and personality are probably due to Adam’s modified DNA, altered years before Sonia was born by the dose of Altean quintessence that brought him back from the dead.

Neither Adam nor Shiro know quite what to expect, as she grows older; she’s human, half of both of them, and already as sharp as a child of six or seven even though she still prefers being carried to walking on her own. But she’s theirs, whatever she might grow up to be—precious and bumbling and soft and sweet, and entirely too curious about bugs for Adam’s aunt Uma’s liking.

“That’s Kaikaus, moonbeam,” Shiro hears, followed by a tiny giggle from Sonia. “And that cluster over there is called Ashlesha, though I don’t know what it is in English.”

“What about their tou-chan names?” says Sonia sleepily, nuzzling into Adam’s neck. “Do they have any?”

“Mm-hm, they do. That dim one is the one I was born under, Cancer, but in Japanese they call it _kani._ It means the same thing, too, a _kekada._ ”

“I know that one!” Sonia lights up like a star, catching the glow of the moon in her eyes as she lifts her face to Adam’s. “He’s a crab! But Papa, he doesn’t look like a _kekada._ ”

“What does he look like, then?”

“A wishing bone.”

“Hmm,” whispers Adam, rocking her softly as she drops her head back on his shoulder. “Maybe you can make a wish on it, baby. Do you want to?”

“No rain tomorrow,” Sonia yawns. “Want to play with Leela in the pond. Please no rain, _kani-hone-san._ ”

“You think you’re ready to go back to bed now, _soniye?_ ”

Sonia only mumbles in reply, and after giving her a feather-light kiss on her nose Adam hoists her up closer and begins the short walk back to the house, still unaware of Shiro sitting alone on the swing. When he comes up the steps Shiro gets up and greets him with a hug, wrapping his arms around Adam’s slender waist until Sonia wriggles from Adam’s embrace to his own.

“I’m sorry I woke you, love,” murmurs Adam, taking Shiro’s hand after giving him a moment to adjust Sonia and her blankets on his chest. “But she wouldn’t sleep, and she would have been jumping around until morning if I didn’t take her out for a walk.”

“You know she didn’t walk, sunshine,” Shiro chuckles. “She didn’t even let you leave her quilt in the bed.”

“Of course she didn’t,” says Adam softly. “You made it for her, moonlight.”

They go back to their bedroom (only the one, since Sonia has made it very plain that the idea of sleeping alone is one she hates immensely) and settle their daughter down on the mattress between them, stretching out under the covers as Shiro shuts the drapes with the help of his prosthetic arm. Sonia’s already fast asleep, curled in a ball with her cheek against Shiro’s shirt and her feet on Adam’s knees, and Adam looks down on her small round face with a strange soft look in his eyes. It means something, Shiro knows—but enthralled as he is by the starlight glinting on Adam’s forehead he can’t tell exactly what.

“Takashi?” he breathes at last. “Takashi, _janu_ , are you awake?”

Shiro feels the wind go out of him at the sound of his name, which always rings so tenderly whenever Adam says it. For a second or two he can only lie there and gape like he does when he finds his husband sleeping, watching dumbly as Adam’s smooth brow wrinkles up in worry.

“Yeah, I am,” he says hastily. “What’s wrong, love?”

“Nothing’s _wrong_ ,” Adam laughs, leaning over to kiss him. “It’s just...well, I’ve been thinking. Hey, are you listening?”

“Devotedly, sunshine.”

“Do you want to have another baby?”

His jaw drops open, and his dream from that last night on the Atlas comes back to him like an ocean washing him clean—of Sonia, not yet born or conceived at the time, leading a stumbling baby with soft brown hair and brown eyes, fair-skinned where Sonia was dark and not quite as steady on her feet as Sonia was at that age. But then he remembers sitting by Adam’s bedside in the medbay with his hand on his flagging heart, frightened not only for his husband’s sake but for the child he was sustaining, still too small and weak and young to come safely into the world.

“Is it safe?” he whispers, clutching Adam tighter. “It was dangerous for you, with Sonia. I know the doctors said there was nothing much to worry about, that I was overreacting, but—”

“You weren’t overreacting,” says Adam firmly, grasping his hands. “And we didn’t know my heart wasn’t—that it wasn’t strong enough. My body didn’t put as much of a strain on my heart after I got revived, so it’s no wonder the doctors didn’t have a clue that Sonia would be difficult. But the last time I had a physical I asked Juliana to check, just in case, and she said it seemed healthier than it was _before_ they hooked me up to Sonia’s pod.”

“You mean—”

“Sonia fixed nearly seventy-five percent of the damage with her stem cells,” Adam smiles, running a hand through Shiro’s hair. “Which kind of makes sense, since she came from mine.”

“So if we have another baby…”

“There’s a good chance I’ll be totally fine. Better, actually.” He kisses Shiro’s nose. “And you’ve wanted another little girl for years, haven’t you?”

“How did you know?” He’s crying now, or laughing. Probably both. He can’t really tell, not with Adam’s lips brushing every inch of his face and tears running into his ears. “A little sister for Sonia. Oh, she’d be perfect.”

“Wanna break the news to Keith?” says Adam slyly, wiggling his eyebrows. “That he’s going to be an uncle again?”

“Oh, he’s going to be so jealous,” Shiro giggles. Keith and Lance’s three sons might look like tiny balls of adorable purple fluff, but they’re just as energetic as Galra children should be, and run their poor parents ragged unless Kolivan and Krolia happen to be visiting with their own small daughter, Kara. “I’ll tell him tomorrow, sweetheart. Let’s go to sleep, and then we can talk to Team Kogane in the morning.”

“Mmm, sounds good.” Adam’s already halfway to dreamland, eyes falling shut as he lies on Shiro’s shoulder. “ _Oyasumi_ , _soniye._ ”

*    *    *

Late the following June, Himeko arrives on a soft spring morning scented with desert flowers. She’s named after Shiro’s late mother, and looks uncannily like her—chubby and pink-cheeked with Adam's flyaway hair, sweet-tempered and smiling and happily content to sleep through the night like a baby many months older—

—and just like her sister, _perfect._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 2 should be out by the end of the week! Kudos and comments are love, and make the whole writing process worthwhile (⌒▽⌒)☆ Thank you all so much for reading!
> 
> come hang out with me on tumblr at @datboicomehere!!!


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